


So Caught Up

by tosca1390



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:05:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is just a human boy, and she won’t be with him forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Caught Up

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the Substitute Arc, post-battle with Grand Fisher.

*

Rukia lays on her side, facing the closet door. Weak moonlight creeps through the cracks and creases of the joints and underneath the door. She shifts under the thin blankets Ichigo managed to find for her weeks ago, when she first settled into his room and his life. The room is very dark, the closet too cool.

Ichigo is still awake. She can feel it, the tension thrumming through the air. He is too quiet, too; in his sleep he snores, and there’s nothing but the slow arch of his breathing in her ear. She finds it hard to sleep if he can’t – she doesn’t know what that means, but it leaves a weird sort of chaos inside her, inside this body she feels too familiar in now.

She sits up and swings her legs over the edge of the makeshift bed. The cuffs of Karin’s borrowed pajamas stick at her wrists and ankles. Slowly, she curls her fingers around the door handle and slides it silently open. His bedroom is dark, with just the moon lighting the shadows. The light slants across the floor and bed, highlighting the saturated orange of his hair. He is curled on his side, his back turned to her.

“Gonna talk to me now?” Ichigo mutters before she can say a word.

Wetting her lips, she hops down to the floor, soft on her feet. “You did very well today, Ichigo,” she says at last.

He sighs. The sound, tense and short, ripples through her. “Not good enough.”

She should go back to bed, she thinks even as she moves towards his. He is just a human boy, and she won’t be with him forever. She should go back to bed and let him sit with his memories and his inadequacies. It is the human way of coping, after all.

“It takes a Reaper of extraordinary training and skill to defeat a Hollow such as Grand Fisher,” she says instead, sitting on the edge of his bed. Her eyes trace the tense breadth of his shoulders. “You should be glad you’re not dead right now.”

Snorting, Ichigo turns on his back, staring straight up at the ceiling. His face is caught in shadows from the moonlight, his mouth a thin line. “Great. Thanks, Rukia,” he mutters, shutting his eyes.

Frustration licks at her insides, a hot push against the back of her throat. She smacks him hard on his bare forearm, brow furrowing. “You are such an idiot sometimes,” she hisses.

He sits up and glares at her, rubbing his arm. “This is what you woke up to tell me? You couldn’t just wait until the morning when this day was over?” he bites out.

“No, I –“ she stops herself, a slow flush crawling up her throat.

The way he looks at her unnerves her. It is all heat and pressure and an odd sort of tenderness that she cannot place, either in her Reaper mind or her human form. She’s never been as mixed up before as she has been in his world. She hates it, and yet she likes it, likes the surprise and Ichigo’s constancy.

Renji would laugh at her, if he could see her now.

“Then what, Rukia?” he asks, his hands dropping to his lap. His long fingers pluck at the sheets bunching there.

Swallowing hard, she tucks her hair behind her ears. “Your mother knew you were meant for something more, Ichigo,” she says at last. “You ought to honor that.”

“I want to,” he says instantly, his voice harsh in the quiet room. “But you have to give me time to do it.”

“It has nothing to do with being a Shinigami,” she retorts. “She would want you to live however you do. Your worth isn’t tied to your blade.”

“And yours is?” he asks.

“It is who I am,” she says, looking away towards the windows for a moment. “It is all I have. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you, Ichigo.”

A silence settles between them, syrupy and heavy. She curls her fingers into fists at her thighs, the color blooming hot in her face. This gigai blushes too easily around him, she thinks as her eyes traces the smudges of rainwater and dust on the windowpanes. The skies are clearing over the town at last.

Suddenly, his lean fingers fall to her wrists, smoothing along the lines of the back of her hands and her knuckles. Her shoulders tense at the touch, as he uncurls her fingers. “It’s not all you have,” he says, low and quiet.

She looks to his face. He’s leaned in towards her, his face smooth and immoveable. But there is the secret in his eyes that she cannot ignore, not right now. He is open and vulnerable after the day he’s had, and there’s a want in his gaze that she can too easily identify and relate to.

She should really go back to the closet, she thinks as she shifts towards him.

His hands cover hers, warm and familiarly callused. She can’t help but think of the scars that now cover his body, from Hollow and Shinigami alike. That’s the one thing that marks him as he passes from his Reaper form and back to his human body; he keeps the scars he earns. He’ll always have them, even after she’s gone from his life.

Perhaps he’ll see them, and think of her.

“You don’t know anything about it, Ichigo,” she says at last, a weary sort of sadness settling through her. “It is everything.”

One of his hands rises to her face, brushing the hair back from her eyes. His fingers are very warm on her skin. She is always cold in this gigai, except when he is near. “Now you’re the idiot,” he says somberly.

“Ichigo, don’t,” she murmurs, ducking her head.

He leans in and presses his mouth to her brow. “Hey, you can’t be mean to me today. Dead mom, remember?” he drawls, voice cracking with the tension.

She wets her lips and tilts her head up. Her fingers move against his, her loose hand falling to the warm cotton of his t-shirt. Everything is slotting together in a way she hadn’t anticipated, the pieces forming a completely different picture of her reality. “We can’t,” she says quietly, an odd lump building at the base of her throat. “We can’t,” she repeats, more for herself than anything else.

A sharp short laugh presses out from his throat. She can feel it reverberate through his chest in her fingers. “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Rukia? I don’t do _can’t_ ,” he says. It’s the first time he’s sounded like himself all day long; she’s grateful for it, so grateful that she doesn’t even notice how he leans in until his mouth is on hers, soft and warm.

It feels different, in the physical world. There is a certain heaviness to the hand on her cheek and the mouth moving over hers that keeps her grounded and fills her with a sharp sweet heat. For a moment, Rukia shuts her eyes and breathes, her fingers biting into his chest. His nose presses against her cheek as his mouth opens against hers. She parts her lips and tightens her fingers around his, their hands clasped between them.

This moment, more than any other, is why she must leave sooner rather than later. It is also the reason why she doesn’t want to leave at all.

With a soft wet sound, their mouths part. His brow presses to hers, his chest rising and falling quickly under her hand.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” she says at last. An ache settles in her middle, lingering and haunting.

Ichigo slides his fingers along the line of her cheek into her hair. He’s got that insufferable smile on his face, white and sharp in the darkness. “I wanted to. I wanted to do something right today,” he says.

She sighs and drops her hand from his chest. “One time thing,” she murmurs, skin flushing under his touch and his gaze.

“I’ve never seen you so flustered,” he says with a grin. “I like it.”

Rolling her eyes, she shoves at his chest. He falls back easily to the bed, tucking a hand behind his head and grinning cheekily at her. “You’re an idiot,” she mutters, trying not to smile as she rises from the bed.

He catches her wrist in his fingertips as she moves towards the open closet door. “Thank you, Rukia,” he murmurs, voice low. It catches deep in her middle, snagging at her heart.

She doesn’t know what to say, really. So, she gives him a slight smile and slips from his grasp. She settles back into the closet and slides the door shut with a soft sigh. Soon he falls asleep, his snores a comforting rumble in the air.

In the morning, it’s as if nothing happened, as if yesterday had been just another day. But during classes, she’ll feel his eyes rest on her, and her mouth will burn with the hazy night memory. She flushes at the throat.

She always flushes too easily, now.

*


End file.
